Writers are voracious readers. Once I unlocked the mystery of the alphabet that led to words, a multitude of words connecting me to the world, there was no stopping me. Everything was fair game, from Louisa May Alcott to my older cousin's True Romance Magazines, from Lewis Carroll to the backs of cereal boxes. All of this fed me, but it took certain books to make me grow. I don't want to work without a sense of drama, without passion, or without both eyes open to the world around me.

A myth is more powerful - and more lasting - than reality.

She could walk through a lightning storm without being touched; grab a bolt of lightning in the palm of her hand; use the heat of lightning to start the kindling going under her medicine pot. She turned the moon into salve, the stars into swaddling cloth, and healed the wounds of every creature walking up on two or down on four.

Spoiled. That's all it's about - can't live without this, can't live without that. You can live without anything you weren't born with, and you can make it through on even half of that.

Time's passage through the memory is like molten glass that can be opaque or crystalize at any given moment at will: a thousand days are melted into one conversation, one glance, one hurt, and one hurt can be shattered and sprinkled over a thousand days. It is silent and elusive, refusing to be damned and dripped out day by day; it swirls through the mind while an entire lifetime can ride like foam on the deceptive, transparent waves and get sprayed onto the conciousness at ragged, unexpected intervals.

Contempt mates well with pity.

Time is a funny thing. I was always puzzled with the way a single day could stretch itself out to the point of eternity in your mind, all while years melted down into the fraction of a second.